I Am Sovereign

by Nicola Barker

  What an extraordinarily interesting and yet strangely complicated/disturbing thought that is.

  Fei Hung – Ying Yue’s wonderful younger brother (Ying Yue was just a failed try-out for a boy) – can speak Chinese. Fei Hung is the Golden Child. Everything about Fei Hung is perfect. Fei Hung actually means ‘bright future’. Fei Hung actually means ‘a swan-goose soaring high in the sky’.

  Although …

  Argh. Forget it.

  Charles must be fifty-odd years old, Avigail surmises (Charles is actually forty years old). Charles makes beautiful bespoke teddy bears for a living. Avigail still can’t entirely come to terms with this notion. It seems like such a silly and improbable way to spend your time. Pointless. Facile. And Charles … There is nothing cute or quaint about Charles. He is uncomfortably tall and pale and his dark hair is long and centre-parted. It hangs in straight flaps either side of his face. And the T-shirts! Avigail doesn’t think for a second that Charles is really a fan of Alanis Morissette, but during her last visit he was wearing a shirt that read: It’s like 10,000 knives when all you need is a spoon.

  Malc (the prospective buyer) had benignly referenced the T-shirt when they were first introduced and it had instantly set off some kind of neurotic response in Charles. He had promptly let slip about the burglary. And the knife (did he do it all on purpose? Had he planned it? Was he actually a self-sabotager? One of those self-sabotagers who doesn’t even know – who isn’t even aware – that they are self-sabotaging? Avigail has bumped up against her fair share of self-sabotagers in her life and is certainly in no hurry to make the acquaintance of another).

  Nobody has even mentioned the T-shirt this time around, though (since Charles isn’t wearing it, and since they have literally only just stepped in through the front door), yet Charles has still felt compelled to mention the burglary. Already! Avigail suspects that Charles will always mention the burglary from now on during viewings. Out of sheer habit.

  He’s such a fuck-up.

  Charles is a kind of Frankenstein. Well, no. What Avigail actually means is that he’s a kind of Frankenstein’s monster. He reminds Avigail of the Native American character in the film of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What was that guy’s name? Chief …?

  Chief …?

  Gets smothered by a pillow in the end.

  Very sad. Although it’s actually a blessing. Because he has no quality of life. Um. Or was it Jack Nicholson’s character – McMurphy – who is smothered by Chief?

  Yes.

  Avigail briefly imagines smothering Charles with a pillow.

  Hmm. It would actually be a blessing. Because he doesn’t really have any quality of life.

  Surrounded by all this stuff.

  There’s a flatness to Charles. An otherworldliness. A deathly pallor.

  Charles has a sewing room which is full of multi-coloured samples of mohair and buttons and kapok for stuffing. He doesn’t like talking about the bears because he isn’t particularly interested in the bears so he doesn’t bother. There is no profound emotional/spiritual connection to the bears – at least, none that he is aware of. But he is emotionally illiterate so he can’t be 100 per cent sure. Although he is 75 per cent sure.

  Charles just got into making the bears as a sideline to gratify a woman he enjoyed a brief relationship with who ran a toy shop in the picturesque but puffed-up Cinque Port town of Rye. He had once worked, briefly, while still a student (he studied architecture – dropped out in his final year), as an industrial machinist.

  He acquired skills.

  Then the whole ‘bear thing’ just took off. Almost by accident. Almost ‘in spite of’.

  Charles really is surprisingly good at making bears.

  Although of late he has taken to making the bears but feeling unable to part with them once they are completed. Even if they have been commissioned.

  Yes. Even bears with a sad and touching personal history connecting them, inviolably, to the person who has commissioned them. Heirloom bears. Post-bereavement bears. Totemic bears who represent something – or someone – tragically lost. Bears – for example – wearing a dress or a suit fashioned out of a former loved-one’s favourite garment or with a tiny pocket containing the ashes (in a special, sparkly-red vial placed in the approximate location of the heart area) of a lost parent or child or pet or lover.

  Avigail notices that Charles has rather beautiful, delicate hands. Long fingers. Neat nails. And he never smells bad. He is clean. Which is some, slight, compensation, she supposes.

  She knows that OCD and hoarding are related conditions so his rigorous personal hygiene makes a weird kind of sense to her.

  Yes, that much, at least, she understands.

  People really do bore Avigail half to death. She much prefers buildings. Buildings are just like people but they stay in one place and are generally open and hospitable. And they talk, but only very, very quietly. In hushed tones.

  Avigail was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community. She didn’t prosper there. Her spirit rebelled against it. She wouldn’t conform. Her ‘out’ was anorexia. Long spells in hospital, months in special units, distant referrals, gradually – stealthily – establishing contacts and relationships in the REAL WORLD outside the Hasidic community. Just subtly, just tentatively. Over time.

  A painstaking adaptation.

  Avigail – like Wang Shu – is a die-hard pragmatist.

  Fucking dreamers and idealists can all go hang.

  Avigail fought tooth and nail to be here. Here. In this God-awful shithole, with these idiotic fucking morons. RIGHT NOW.

  ‘She didn’t actually break in,’ Avigail reiterates.

  Avigail is irritated with Charles for mentioning the burglary, twice.

  Charles is looking at Avigail with a frown.

  She?!

  Why would Avigail possibly imagine that the potential thief could’ve been female?

  And why is she called A-vi-gail instead of A-bi-gail?

  ‘Perhaps she got disturbed,’ he mutters. Slight roll of the eyes.

  Avigail really has some nerve trying to appropriate his burglary narrative like that.

  She?

  Seriously?

  She?!

  In therapeutic circles that would be called … uh …

  What would they call that?

  ‘Perhaps a seagull?’ Ying Yue murmurs these words quietly while gazing down, self-effacingly, at the scuffed, tiled floor. Then she removes her hand from the lovely, brown saddle – which has been worn deliciously smooth by the endless friction of Charles’s dead mother’s thighs – and performs a little – and quite funny – mime of something crashing into her head.

  ‘Perhaps disturbed by a seagull?’ she reiterates with a husky laugh. ‘The burglar?’

  Already Ying Yue feels like her volume button has been turned down to virtually inaudible.

  Who turned the button down?

  She glances around her, blinking.

  Did Ying Yue turn the button down?

  (Ying Yue often refers to herself in the third person.)

  She blinks, then smiles.

  Oh, look!

  Ying Yue is a tiny pinch of sand!

  On a giant, sandy beach!

  Let’s build sandcastles!

  They are all still standing by the front door. It feels like they have been standing there, huddled together, in a pack, for ever.

  ‘Sorry? Did … is that a mime of … did you just mime a seagull shitting on your head, Ying Yue?’ Avigail finally pipes up, confused.

  Ying Yue has a way of talking – a way of looking down and swallowing her words – that makes it hard to follow what she says.

  ‘I apologise for using the word “shit”,’ Avigail adds, as an afterthought (although, even in so doing, she uses it for a second time).

  ‘Shit. Yes. No! Shit! Heaven forbid!’ Charles echoes, drolly.

  He immediately imagines a T-shirt that reads: I sincerely apologise for using the word

&
nbsp; Charles patently still has some growing up to do.

  As she speaks, Avigail is inspecting Ying Yue’s head. Ying Yue’s head seems fine. Although her hair is slightly greasy. Ying Yue points – with a clumsy, submissive gesture – towards Wang Shu.

  ‘Oh. Okay. Did a seagull …?’

  Ying Yue draws breath. ‘An oyster shell. It fell down from the sky. Psssseeeeeuuuuuu! Dropped by a bird. It clipped Wang Shu’s head. There is some blood. A little blood. But Wang Shu is fine. Wang Shu is good.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Avigail scratches her own head. ‘This was … You mean outside? Just this minute? An oyster shell? Over on Trevor Street? But why didn’t I … why didn’t you just say something?’

  Avigail is confused. She has no memory of this incident – this curious little drama. She replays the walk up Trevor Street with Wang Shu and Ying Yue in her mind but can’t recall anything remotely untoward …

  Nope. Nothing.

  Just the normal sales pitch about the local area – not that this was remotely necessary, since Wang Shu and Ying Yue both work, full-time, on Llandudno pier (Ying Yue collects the tokens on the Bouncy Castle) and they know the town extremely well.

  Although … uh … Didn’t Avigail just think some negative gull thoughts – literally moments ago? Perhaps she was aware – at a subconscious level – of something untoward having recently occurred?

  And wasn’t there a phone call? On her mobile? Didn’t she receive a phone call from the office just as …?

  Nah. This makes no sense.

  Avigail demands that the world make sense. At least her tiny piece of it – the tiny bit that she so carefully and rigorously marshals.

  Charles winces. He holds the popcorn maker even closer to his chest as if to protect it from the horror of random accidents.

  Don’t worry, popcorn maker. You’ll be fine. Never fear. I’ll look after you, I promise.

  x

  ‘It’s okay,’ Ying Yue explains, ‘Ma dabbed the blood off with this tissue.’

  Dabbed!

  What a funny word! Ying Yue thinks, and smiles at her capacity to astonish herself.

  Avigail sees that (a now mysteriously smiling) Ying Yue is clutching a bloody tissue in the hand of her good arm. Wang Shu is still talking, animatedly, in a harsh, rasping voice, on the phone, apparently completely unperturbed by what has happened.

  Avigail peers into Wang Shu’s short, chaotic, clumsily cropped head of hair and detects a kind of dampness – a reddish-blackness – down one side, just behind the right ear. She also sees a patch of something suspiciously like blood on Wang Shu’s shoulder.

  ‘Ma is very strong.’ Ying Yue bows, proudly. ‘Nothing worries her. She is very tough. A tough lady. Like … uh …’ she muses for a second, ‘… water off a duck’s back.’

  She beams.

  Charles looks over at Avigail, disquieted. Avigail is an estate agent who has been hired by the bank. The bank have had a gutful of Charles but are trying to play ball because it still suits them to do so. Although they really don’t give a damn about Charles – or any of their stupid customers. The TV adverts to the opposite effect are all just a hoax, a dreadful lie.

  Avigail is dressed somewhat inappropriately for her role, which Charles finds confusing. Avigail dresses as though she might be going out for cocktails. Avigail dresses for another, better kind of life. Her skirt is trimmed with sequins.

  ‘Are you going out for cocktails?’ Charles suddenly wonders, apropos of nothing.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Avigail glances down at herself.

  ‘Are you …?’ Charles starts to repeat himself and then stops and swallows, realising what an idiot he sounds.

  Cocktails?!

  Must. Think. Before. Speak.

  ‘Cocktails? Seriously, Charles?’ Avigail snorts. ‘In Llandudno? On a Wednesday afternoon?’

  Charles just laughs, nervously.

  ‘No. No! Cocktails?! Why would you even say that?’ she persists.

  Avigail regrets having used Charles’s name a few moments before. There was a slight atmosphere of condescension – of judgement – in it, she knows. And then ‘Why would you even say that?’ suddenly sounds – just the tone, the delivery – very Jewish, very Jewish mother-y. Good gracious!

  But why would he say that?! Intonation aside?

  Cocktails?!

  And why now? In the middle of this whole combustible seagull situation which may well prove catastrophic to the potential sale?

  Charles bites his lip and his Toxic Super-Ego hisses, ‘You fucking idiot. Now she’ll despise you. And who can really blame her if she does?’

  In truth, Charles doesn’t especially care what Avigail thinks of him, but he does care how her potentially despising him might (indeed, does) make him feel about himself. If that makes any kind of sense. Hmm. He scowls. Does that actually make any kind of sense?

  It’s not that he’s incredibly self-involved …

  (Am I just incredibly self-involved?)

  … it’s simply that he has no remaining illusions about how the world sees him. How it feels about him. How it despises him. The whole world. How it judges him. Finds him ridiculous. Finds him inadequate. Finds him wanting. Always.

  That’s all.

  But hey …

  FUCK YOU, YEAH?

  AND FUCK YOUR STUPID WORLD!

  This is a perfect example of Trauma Tunnel Embitterment. Charles knows, in his heart, that there’s nothing really wrong with the world. There’s only a problem with how he – post trauma – views the world. This is why he needs to get started on the course.

  But he can’t get started.

  Richard Grannon has clearly outlined in the module on Mental Toughness (‘Let’s get shit done!’) that people with Charles’s instinctive psychological ‘response’ (e.g. Emotional Flashbacks/Bloated Super-Ego/Trauma Tunnel Embitterment) often find it difficult to embrace change, to initiate new modes of behaviour, to – deep inhale – just get started. For this very reason Richard Grannon has included a handy sixteen-minute hypnosis session in one of the appendices that gently talks the Silencing the Inner Critic member through the special blocks and negative thought patterns that may stop them from getting properly under way with the course.

  But a person – a member – would naturally need to get under way with the course before they might hope to locate and subsequently employ this helpful strategy.

  Grannon discusses this paradox – with great passion and alacrity – in the live webcasts that accompany the course, two of which Charles has watched – with close attention – while hoovering.

  Charles knows that he exaggerates how bad his dad was. His dad never called him a ‘pathetic piece of crap’ but the message was there, in looks and gestures and a chronic want of eye contact – or a chronic excess of eye contact. Which was it?

  Neither?

  Both?

  In truth he can’t be bothered thinking about all this stuff. He’s scared of it. And he’s bored of it. And Grannon doesn’t believe there’s any point in trawling through old memories to work out why everything’s fucked up. It takes too long. And it’d be confusing. Although it depends where you are on the Cognitive Post Traumatic Stress Response scale (yes, a ‘Response’ – they don’t call it a ‘Disorder’ any more because Grannon believes these behaviours can be unlearned). If you are over 5 on the CPTSR scale (the scale runs 1–10) then you should probably also be seeking therapeutic support in conjunction with the course. Charles hasn’t entirely processed this idea yet.

  He isn’t sure where he is on the scale. He hasn’t got around to working it out.

  There are four basic responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

  Charles runs from life/conflict (flight) and freezes under stress (retreats into his imagination).

  Oh. And he over-intellectualises instead of simply feeling.

  He certainly isn’t warlike (fight).

  And he isn’t really a people person (fawn).
/>   He only very rarely offers compliments.

  Hardly ever.

  Never.

  It’s just a question of calmly and systematically re-patterning the way that you think. It shouldn’t take long – a couple of months, at most. In fact some people have reported feeling a giant weight lifting from their shoulders after only two or three days. The material is so effective. It’s revolutionary. But as soon as Grannon uttered the dread words ‘after only two or three days’ Charles knew that he was now set up to fail. Because there was no way he would ever feel better that quickly. He is too damaged. And he is hyper-competitive. And he is a sore loser. And even if he did feel better that quickly then he probably wouldn’t actually realise because he can never really tell how he feels because he is emotionally illiterate, and automatically over-intellectualises or disappears into fantasy when things get too challenging.

  Charles’s father is a recently retired fisherman in Conwy. Charles’s father fished for plaice, mullet, whiting, codling and dab off Conwy for over forty years. Charles’s father had a brief affair with Charles’s mother (Branimira) but then chose to stay with his wife of seventeen years. Charles’s three older half-brothers still crew Charles’s father’s boat. Mainly they use it to take tourists out on jaunts and to ferry the wind-farm workers back and forth. The boat is called TRI BRAWD, which is Welsh for THREE BROTHERS.